To restore an old black and white photos don’t feel you have to struggle with trying to match varying uneven colour casts.
Often the old photos will have stained or taken on a brownish colour, in uneven patches. You can use either the “to black and white” or “desaturate” or “mode/ grey scale” to turn all those nasty stains or discolourations to black and white. This way your photo will be easier to restore. Afterwards, you can add back any tint or preferable colour cast. Trying to match in a colour cast or stain is time-consuming and unnecessary. Using the patch tool over coloured areas can cause colours to merge and spread. By converting to black and white or desaturate the colour avoids this altogether.
Ensure you have scanned in a low compression file format. You could also use a high bit colour scan, this allows the maximum amount of “bending” of the colour channels without leaving any nasty artefacts.
Adding back the tint is super easy and can be done in a variety of ways. For three ways to do this see three ways to turn a three ways to tint a photo or if you know of any other ways then let me know and I can add them into this post.
Just a quick mini blog post to start the year! Keep coming back to the blog and learn more every month!